"June 26 (Bloomberg BusinessWeek) -- Federal regulators slapped Delta Air Lines with a $750,000 fine Wednesday for not compensating passengers bumped from flights, the company’s second such violation in four years. The U.S. Department of Transportation said Delta had not sought volunteers willing to relinquish their seat on oversold flights, a common industry practice aimed at mitigating the large number of people who miss flights they have booked.

The interesting part is the remedy Delta negotiated with federal regulators....'

The latest penalty could be considered a bit of a technology-infrastructure win for Delta, which has been spending heavily in recent years to upgrade its mobile and online tools to help passengers check in and manage travel itineraries. The airline has 15 months to equip and train its gate agents with new tablets. A Delta spokesman said the airline hasn’t chosen between Apple (AAPL) iPads or Androids—the settlement doesn’t specify a tablet brand.

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The GAs will need tablets, rather than using existing tools, to do what they need to do?

So we give more technology, to a company that clearly struggles with technology, to improve something as easy as an announcement of "We are overbooked". If I was to bet, the "problem" probably comes in their automated system that busts people off of flights because their flight was delayed.

I recently encountered a "delay" of two minutes, and upon arriving to the gate in time to board for the proper zone (F), I was told that I wasn't on that flight and I had been rebooked. Needless to say, I was on that flight and was seated in the appropriate cabin, although it made someone take the walk of shame and created a whole lot of clickity clackity on the keyboard to "fix" it.

Yeah the "punishment" makes no sense to me. If the fine doesn't hurt, they're not going to care... it will just complicate things even more by having to build a setup around these tablets so that gate agents can do what every other airline seems to be perfectly capable of doing.

Of course it depends on how this was argued. Maybe Delta said they didn't have the equipment to be able to do it or some crazy nonsense story, and the agreement to improve the system resulted in what you see today as a "fine" -- even though it's laughable.

Delta has felt particularly slimy to me since they started using the "bidding" system for VDBs. It just reeks of a way to circumvent the rules and bump people for the lowest cost possible.

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